The big news this month for legal technology is the announcement that Autonomy will purchase Interwoven.  The motivation for the buyout would appear to be the acquisition of Interwoven’s Worksite product and its associated large law firm user base.  The purchase will provide Autonomy with an entry into the legal market for its search technology, an area where it has been trailing behind Recommind and Vivisimo by a significant margin.

The largest impact for law firms will be to those that have invested heavily in Interwoven’s Vivisimo powered search, either in the standard Worksite implementation or in the more powerful Universal Search tool.  Autonomy have indicated that they will be replacing the Vivisimo engine with their own “IDOL” (Intelligent Data Operating Layer) system.

This change also impacts the release schedule of the WorkSite product with a likely slip in the 8.5 release to allow for the integration of IDOL instead of Vivisimo.

All up, the move is likely to make Autonomy investors happy, as Interwoven was being targeted by a number of companies and Vivisimo investors very unhappy as they lose a valuable OEM supplier.  Open Text will also be overjoyed that law firms considering implementing Worksite may now think twice until some of the uncertainty surrounding the takeover has passed, something that may take a number of years.

The full press release can be found here:
http://www.interwoven.com/